


mirage

by cheloniidae



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Discussion of Genocide, Episode: s01e16 If Wishes Were Horses, Gen, Not Beta Canon compliant, Occupation of Bajor, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21800083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheloniidae/pseuds/cheloniidae
Summary: Imagination comes to life on Deep Space Nine, and Elim Garak confronts himself.
Relationships: Elim Garak & Enabran Tain, Elim Garak & Mila Garak
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of a deleted fic.

Most houses in this part of Cardassia City have more than two servants, but Enabran Tain’s house is not most houses. Elim and Mila share all the work of keeping it: scrubbing the floors, washing linens and clothes, dusting the many shelves, preparing the meals. (Between the two of them, Elim is the superior cook, a fact he teases his mother about relentlessly.) Elim never complains about the lack of other help, and this is for two reasons. One: Tain would punish him, and he doesn’t like to be punished. Two: When Tain leaves for the country, he and Mila have the house all to themselves.

This morning, Mila sings while they weed the garden. She never does this when Tain is home. _He’ll take everything that you are,_ she once warned Elim. _You must hide pieces of yourself where he can’t reach them._ But that was long ago; Garak is far beyond childhood, and Mila’s hair has been pure white for years. The impossibility of their ages in this house, in this time, reminds Elim that this is a dream. He chooses not to dwell on that, lest he wake up. He misses working a garden. He misses the trill of Mila’s singing.

(He should be more disciplined than this, but pleasant dreams are so rare.)

The sun is warm on his back, and the dirt is warm under his fingers, and the flowers grow tall and resplendent around the two of them. Beyond the walls of the garden, Cardassia City thrums with life, waiting to accept Elim with open arms. He joins his voice with Mila’s. They sing a song of homecoming.

All perfect things must end. A noise — the hum of a replicator — comes from the house. Mila doesn’t react, but that’s to be expected. Her hearing isn’t artificially enhanced as Elim’s is. “Someone is using our replicator,” he warns her. “Stay here.”

Again, the noise. But their replicator doesn’t sound quite like that, does it? Theirs has a higher pitch. The replicator that the intruder is using—

Is the one in Garak’s quarters.

He’s awake in an instant. Disruptor in hand, he soundlessly opens the bedroom door. From there, he can see the kitchen— and the intruder inside. The intruder is an elderly Cardassian woman with white hair and a stocky build. Even with her back turned to him, Garak would recognize her anywhere. Mila — or an impostor — is in Garak’s kitchen, dicing k’hava fruit. For a long moment, he can only stare.

 _What_ and _how_ and _why_ race through his mind, but he only says, “I didn’t hear the door chime.”

“Good morning, Elim.” Possibly-Mila turns away from the cutting board, eyes the disruptor aimed squarely at her, and wisely sets down her knife. “Didn’t I teach you better than to point that thing at guests?”

Garak fights the childhood instinct to obey the implied command. “An unannounced guest, who has yet to prove her identity.” He’s proud of how steady his voice remains, and of how he hasn’t said anything unforgivably sentimental, like _I was just dreaming of you_.

Possibly-Mila rolls her eyes. “All that paranoia. Tain would be proud. When you were eleven, while he was away on business, you broke a Hebitian vase. You hacked into the computers of the Lakarian City Auction House to find its transporter buffer, and you replicated a near-perfect copy. It took Tain five months to notice that the vase had been replaced. He was so impressed with you that he only locked you up for half an hour.” She puts a hand on her hip. “Now, are you satisfied, or do you want to pester that doctor you’ve been courting for a bioscan?”

Garak lowers the disruptor to his side. “Humans don’t consider it courting.” Mila knows about Bashir, which means Tain knows about Bashir. Garak had suspected as much, but he still feels a twinge of concern for the good doctor. Bashir is shockingly naive. It’s as though he comes from some other universe, one where the natural laws of motion and matter are complemented by laws of moral rightness, and he still doesn’t realize he’s crossed through the looking-glass. He’s incapable of understanding the dangers involved in his association with Garak, just as he’s incapable of understanding what their routine arguments would signify on Cardassia.

“I’m not criticizing. He’s pretty for a Human, isn’t he?” Mila’s teasing grin softens into something warmer, gentler. The depth of sincerity is nearly unsettling. “I never wanted you to be lonely,” she says, raising her palm in invitation.

Garak sets down his disruptor, goes to Mila, and presses his palm to hers. He realizes, now, how long he’s craved this familiar, familial touch. He forces himself to break it first, just to prove that he can. (His hand feels cold, suddenly— a chill beyond the station’s usual intolerable temperature, something the implant’s endorphins can’t soothe.) “What does Tain need from me?”

“He didn’t send me, Elim.” Garak doesn’t outwardly react, but Mila looks at him with pity. She always could see right through him. “I came because I’m a mother who hasn’t seen her son in ten years.”

“But he gave you permission.” If nothing else, that’s a sign Tain is starting to forgive Garak. He wouldn’t allow Mila to visit someone he truly thought of as a traitor.

Mila turns back to the cutting board and resumes her work. The scent of k’hava fills the air, sharp and tart.

“Mila,” says Garak, to no response. A chill runs through him. “Mother.”

“If you want to make yourself useful, the taspar eggs need to be prepared for stuffing. You were always better at that than I was.”

“He’s dangerous, Mila. Retirement didn’t change that.”

“Tain is dangerous?” Mila asks, sardonic, looking at over her shoulder at Garak. “In all our years together, I never noticed.”

When Garak was very young, in a fit of childish stupidity, he decided to run away. Mila caught him in the cellar, stuffing food into a knapsack. She knelt down to look him in the eye, took his hands in hers, and promised that if he tried to run away, Master Tain would lock him inside the closet for the rest of his life. Garak still remembers the strength of her grip, as though she was trying to press understanding through his scales. He knows, now, that Tain would have done much worse, but death is abstract to a child, and the closet was very, very real.

“When are you returning to Arawath?” asks Garak, wrapping the unutterable in something that won’t cut his throat from the inside.

“Tonight. If you can make time for your mother.”

“Tain—“

“Is away on Avenal VII for two weeks. Now, are you going to keep arguing, or are you going to get dressed and help me with breakfast?”

A beat passes between them. “I don’t see why I can’t do both,” Garak says. Mila laughs her outside laugh, a sound she only makes in places where Tain and his devices can’t hear, a piece of her she keeps out of his reach. Garak associates it with clear skies and the bustle of an outdoor market. For a moment, he can taste spices on the air.

Garak goes to his bedroom and closes the door, muffling the sounds from the kitchen. As he dresses, he wonders how long Mila has been planning this. Sneaking off of Arawath — out of Cardassian space entirely — without alerting Enabran Tain isn’t something that can be done on a whim. This reunion must be months in the making. Years. And by proving that she’s capable of it, Mila has also proven that she’s a threat to Tain. She knows that, doesn’t she? She must. This isn’t her buying an extra sweet for Garak at the market; the stakes are higher than a bruised face (for her) and an hour in the closet (for him). Mila has too much information to be allowed free movement. One whisper from her in the wrong ear could destroy everything Tain has built. If he learns about this, he’ll kill her. He’d be foolish not to.

Not that Garak believes Mila would ever betray Tain, but that’s his own sentiment talking. A threat is a threat, and Mila is, objectively speaking, not a useful enough asset to justify the risk.

A thought snags him like a thorn: By warning Tain of the threat, Garak can prove that he has no higher loyalties beyond Cardassia itself. If his sentiment towards Mila can’t sway his judgment, no sentiment can. He’ll have learned his lesson, and Tain will let him out of the cold closet of Terok Nor, and all will be as it should. And Mila—

The shock of it hits him.

Mila wouldn’t expect him to betray Tain. She’s offering herself as the closet key, as a sacrifice. That was her purpose in coming here.

For a long minute, Garak stands at his terminal, waiting for his fingers to type the necessary codes. One message. Just one simple message, and he can go home. He can be Tain’s instrument once again. Mila expects him to do this, wants him to do this. Why isn’t he typing the message?

The endorphins must be clouding his thinking.

For the first time in over a year, Garak opens the drawer containing the implant activation device. He’ll have to destroy it before he returns to Cardassia, of course. Tain will see his reliance on the implant as a weakness, and he mustn’t show weakness. The device’s casing is slick under his fingers. With the unflinching deliberateness of forcing a broken bone into place, Garak turns the dial to zero.

A wave of pain engulfs his arm. His hand spasms, and the device clatters deafeningly to the floor. He forces himself to breathe through it. The station air, suddenly freezing, makes his lungs ache. He never had any trouble withstanding pain before he started abusing the implant, but the endorphins act as an opioid, and heightened sensitivity to pain is a side-effect of longterm use. He flexes his hand, then bites his tongue against another wave of agony. He spent hours yesterday hand-beading a Starfleet officer’s wedding dress, working into the night, ignoring the slight twinge in his wrist. Not so slight anymore, is it?

If he sends this message to Enabran, he’ll never have to touch another wedding dress for as long as he lives. His head is clear. He knows what to do.

He picks up the device, returns it to a medium setting, and sets it back in the drawer. The tide of pain recedes; the knife-edge chill of the station air grows dull. He checks himself in the mirror. His pupils are wide-blown, his ridges ash-pale, in testament to the ordeal. He makes himself breathe, even and slow, until no trace remains.

Garak leaves the message untyped and unsent, and he joins Mila in the kitchen. He doesn’t allow himself to think about the (traitorous) choice he’s making. It doesn’t feel like a choice at all. While they work, Mila hums, and Garak luxuriates in the sound. He thought he might never hear it again.

“You’re quiet this morning,” Mila observes.

“I’m contemplating which book to give Doctor Bashir tomorrow,” Garak says, as he slices the top off a taspar egg. “I planned to give him _The Baying of the Hounds_ , but I realized, just this morning, that he would find Nima Marayn’s fate unpalatable.”

 _Baying_ is a classic repetitive epic, and Nima Marayn is the mother of the third cycle’s main protagonist. When her son is wrongfully accused of deserting his post, she attempts to prove him innocent. She succeeds in finding exonerating evidence, but her jubilation is cut short by the accuser, who has been following her since her investigation began. The accuser destroys the evidence, and Marayn’s death is made to look like a suicide, born out of the disgrace her son has brought on their family. The son’s monologue after he finds her body is a fixture of Cardassian theater.

“Would he.” Mila stops cutting. “If he doesn’t get it from you, I doubt anyone will give it to him.”

“I could tell him that, but it wouldn’t change his mind. The man can be very stubborn.” Garak pauses, not looking at Mila. “The only trouble is, I’m unsure if I’m prepared for such a sudden change in plans. Some last-minute arrangements might be necessary.”

“I’m sure you’ve already taken care of them.”

She _does_ have a plan to return to Arawath undetected. Relief floods through Garak. It shouldn’t, because this is only further proof that Mila is a danger to Tain, but Garak’s pulse levels out all the same. Their discussion moves on to modern Cardassian art (slightly soured by the recent arrest of a prominent painter for associating with radicals in the Underground). They boil the k’hava-stuffed eggs, leaning close to the pot, drinking in its warmth.

Over breakfast, they discuss the goings-on of Arawath and the station. Mila’s knowledge of the station is all second-hand; she thinks Tain was joking when he told her about Commander Sisko punching out a Q in a boxing match, and Garak gets to tell her that he was being entirely truthful. Mila’s laugh flows like kanar. The taspar tastes replicated, and the k’hava is too sweet. It’s the best meal Garak has had in years. After they finish, Mila asks, “Do you still have that recording of Jasal Sovat and the Lakarian City Orchestra?”

She loaned the recording to Garak shortly before his exile; he never had the chance to return it. Of course, in those years, Sovat hadn’t yet been put on trial for treason, and the recording was still legal to possess. Garak considers denying it, but Mila isn’t here as Tain’s eyes and ears, and exiles aren’t bound by Central Command’s decrees. “Of course I do.”

“Can you play it for us? I’ll start cleaning up.”

Garak goes to his desk to fetch the data rod. The first strains of the Cardassian Union's anthem drift through the air, the standard beginning for any concert, and as Sovat starts to sing, Garak sees that the kitchen is empty.

“Mila?” he calls.

Jasal Sovat’s is the only voice to reply.


	2. Chapter 2

“Computer,” says Garak. “Delete all records of this query and all future queries made by this user for the next twenty-six hours.” He gives the necessary authorization code, courtesy of Gul Dukat.

“Confirmed.”

“Locate all Cardassian lifeforms on the station.”

“There are two Cardassian lifeforms on the station: one in chamber 901, habitat level H-3, and one in corridor H-16-B.”

Mila is still on the station. She didn’t say that she would be leaving, but perhaps she’s meeting with whoever will be helping her return to Arawath, and she wanted to give Garak deniability. Mila is a capable woman… Still, it can’t hurt to check on her. The station’s security feeds are insultingly easy to access, and within a minute, Garak is looking at the feed for corridor H-16-B.

Mila is nowhere to be seen. The feed shows a different Cardassian woman: young, twenty-five at the most. An equally young Bajoran woman, clad in one of those ghastly Militia uniforms, hangs off her arm, and the pair stroll leisurely down the corridor, as a courting couple on Cardassia Prime might stroll through a park. “—wanted to do this,” the Cardassian is saying.

“It’s a gift from the Prophets.” The Bajoran — Rivni Nell, Garak finally recognizes — presses closer to the Cardassian. Members of the Bajoran Militia aren’t known for their warm feelings towards Cardassians, but if Rivni is acting, she’s doing a superb job of it. “I never stopped dreaming about seeing you again.”

The Cardassian woman’s presence on the station is a mystery, but one that Garak doesn’t have time to solve. Mila, as a well-taken precaution, must have gotten an implant to prevent the station’s computer from recognizing her life signature. Clever, but it means Garak will need to sift through the habitat ring's security feeds by hand. He starts from the corridor outside his quarters — empty, no sign of Mila — and works his way out to the next, and the next, and the next…

He stares, dumbstruck.

In corridor H-7-D, a Human child flies through the air, outstretched arms parallel to the ground. A blanket is tied around their neck, forming a makeshift cape. (His? Human children are so difficult to classify at a glance, compared to Cardassians of the same age.) The child vanishes from sight, and two Human men appear on the feed, running after the child. Garak remembers a thoroughly embarrassed Doctor Bashir explaining the concept of superheroes: vigilantes with capes and masks, flying through the streets of fictional cities. _Human children love playing superhero,_ Bashir had said. _Don’t tell me Cardassian children never play pretend!_

An anomaly on the station is causing imagination to become reality.

Before Mila’s unexpected visit, Garak had been dreaming of her.

The realization is a shock of cold clarity, like diving into the waters off the shores of Kraness. Mila has never set foot on this station. She never will. The food had been real, but Mila’s touch, her laugh, her smile, were nothing more than pathetic make-believe. A mirage conjured by a man left in the desert for too long. (It could have been worse. He might have dreamed of his interrogations, or of Tain.

Tain, who doesn’t know how badly Garak failed him. And Garak _did_ fail, no matter the fact that he was administering his own exam.)

There are countless ways this anomaly could end in the destruction of the station, optimistically, or the destruction of the sector, pessimistically— and Garak stops himself, at the last moment, from wondering how many vengeful Bajorans on this station might be happily imagining the Cardassian Union reduced to ash and rubble. If he imagines someone imagining something, is that enough to cause it? His instinct is to track the threads of possible outcomes, but that alone might bring the worst to pass.

He directs his thoughts to safer paths.

For all that Starfleet claims to be on a mission of peace, Garak isn’t convinced its officers aren’t agents of primordial chaos. In the months since Starfleet took control of Terok Nor, the station has had to contend with the appearance of a stable wormhole, a Starfleet officer beating an omnipotent alien in a boxing match, Quark’s temporary ascension to Grand Nagus, and now _a wish-granting anomaly_. Really, it’s enough to make him wonder whether Humans, unbeknownst to themselves and an unsuspecting Alpha Quadrant, exude some sort of probability distortion field. It would explain quite a lot about them. The second-hand stories Doctor Bashir tells him about the Enterprise… What a fascinatingly improbable expedition.

Garak resolves to mention the theory when they discuss _Les Miserables_ tomorrow. _How else could Humans consider a novel with so many coincidences to be anything but farce,_ he’ll say, and Bashir will—

Ah. Best not to think of that, either, with the anomaly active.

Out of curiosity (and need for a distraction), Garak returns to the security feed of Rivni Nell and the unknown Cardassian woman. Rivni is alone, now, and her sobs come tinny and muffled through the feed. The mirage she summoned must have vanished. A crying Bajoran is nothing Garak hasn’t heard before, nothing he hasn’t caused hundreds of times, but exile has made him… less amenable to the sound. The art of breaking a person, like all other arts, requires regular practice. A simple tailor has few opportunities, unless he doesn’t care about retaining customers.

“Let me see Kalana again,” Rivni begs. “Please, Prophets. Please. One more minute, just one more minute…” She trails off, subsiding back into sobs.

Kalana is a given name reserved for women of high birth. A Bajoran sobbing over a Cardassian from a well-established family… Garak makes a habit of maintaining thorough knowledge of all the station’s long-term residents, and he mentally flips through his file on Rivni Nell. Twenty-four years old, once a member of the Resistance cell in Musilla Province, now a member of the Bajoran Militia. Musilla, Musilla… Gul Tiral oversaw that province. His eldest daughter, Kalana, was killed in a Resistance attack on their estate not long before Cardassia’s withdrawal. Her age at death matches the Cardassian woman from the feed.

The puzzle of Rivni Nell just became irresistible.

Under normal circumstances, Garak would need to slowly research this mystery through his remaining contacts on Cardassia. The anomaly, however, has granted him a rare opportunity for a more efficient approach. Best of all, with no others involved, the any leverage the investigation yields will be entirely his. Varis Evet— that’s his name. The best lies are based in truth, and Evet’s story rhymes with that of a Bajoran whom Garak once interrogated. Middle-aged, Lonarian, made a widower by the Occupation. He never truly believed he would live to see Bajor’s freedom, but he has.

He never believed the Prophets would choose an alien soldier as their Emissary, either, but they did. He came to the station to see this Human Commander Sisko; instead, the Prophets allowed him a precious handful of hours with a wife he hadn’t seen in fifteen years. Absently, he touches his earring. Its constant presence is a comfort.

(A professional operative knows how to become the lie.)

Several minutes later, secure in his identity, Varis Evet takes the turbolift to level sixteen. He considers the Prophets’ gift a sign he should consider a permanent move to the station, and he wants to see what the habitat ring is like. This level has no current residents; as Evet prefers silence most of the time (the labor camp was crowded and filthy and _loud_ ), the solitude suits him well.

To Evet’s surprise, when he steps out of the lift, he’s greeted with the sound of distant sobs. Further down the corridor, a woman in a Militia uniform sits with her back to the wall, knees close to her chest, face hidden from sight. Even at a distance, Evet can see how her shoulders shake. The sight tugs at his sympathy. He approaches her slowly, careful that his footsteps are loud enough to warn her of his approach. Startling a member of the Militia is never pleasant for either party.

“What troubles you?” Evet asks in the language that other races call Bajoran, and Bajorans call Standard. His Lonarian accent is flawless. It has no reason not to be.

The woman sniffles, but when she speaks, it’s with some measure of composure. “The Prophets decided that my time with the anomaly is over.”

“Mine as well,” Evet says, with gentle sympathy. He motions to the floor beside the woman, and she nods, granting him permission to sit with her. “Varis Evet,” he introduces himself.

“Rivni Nell. Can I ask… Can I ask what the Prophets showed you?”

“They allowed me to see my wife. The Cardassians took her for interrogation fifteen years ago.” He and Rivni both lived through the Occupation; he doesn’t need to clarify that they didn't release her alive.

“May the Prophets grant her peace.”

Evet accepts the benediction with gratitude. “We met in a labor camp in Kendra,” he says. “She was Penkian; I was from Lonar, in the northern mountains. The only Standard either of us knew was Gaudaal’s Lament. The Cardassians had universal translators for giving the prisoners orders, but the laborers… It pleased them when we couldn’t speak to each other.”

“You can’t build a resistance without words.”

Evet nods. “We spent most of our first months there together, she and I. We felt on equal footing. The others could all understand each other, but we were both outsiders. Equally incomprehensible.” A distant smile works across Evet’s face. “She devised a system for us to communicate through verse numbers of the Lament. That was how we learned to speak. She always had a gift for codes,” he adds, smile fading. “Always.” He falls silent, allowing Rivni to fill in the details: Evet’s wife used her gift for codes to help the Resistance. The Cardassians captured her in order to break them, codes and woman both.

(In the mirror-rhyme of Evet’s story, the wife killed herself rather than be captured, and the Obsidian Order chose an agent with extensive knowledge of encryption to interrogate the husband. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the husband knew next to nothing of his wife’s work. The trip to Bajor was an utter waste of time.)

Rivni finally fills the silence, offering truth for truth. “The person who came to me… I lost her to the Cardassians, too.”

“Kalana?”

Rivni stiffens in surprise.

“I couldn’t help overhearing. If you’ll forgive an old man for his unwanted advice, I find speaking of these things eases their pain. You were very kind to listen to me.” (By the standard of an average Bajoran lifespan during the Occupation, middle-aged Evet _is_ old.)

After a clear internal struggle, Rivni takes the bait. “Will this stay between us?”

Evet touches his earring. “I swear on my pagh, in view of the Prophets.” No Bajoran would dream of breaking that oath.

“My mother was a servant in Gul Tiral’s home,” Rivni begins haltingly. Any Bajoran would know that name: overseer of the Musilla Province for thirty years. The other provinces changed hands often, but Gul Tiral clung to Musilla like a stubborn leech whom no amount of blood could ever sate. “Kalana was his daughter, but she was nothing like him. You have to understand, to her, we were family. The servants’ kids, I mean.

“Gul Tiral… You know what happened to us in Cardassian homes. Kalana wanted to stop the beatings. She thought… Prophets, we were so young then. She thought he didn’t understand that Bajorans felt pain like Cardassians did, and if we just explained that to him, he’d be as kind to us as he was to her.” Rivni shakes her head in disbelief. “My mother had to talk her out of it. I still remember the look on Kalana’s face when she realized Gul Tiral _wanted_ to hurt us.

“She used to tell me — this was years later — she’d tell me the Occupation killed her father in every way that mattered. Kalana thought the Occupation was... like a disease. That by undermining it, she was helping Cardassia as much as Bajor. So, when I decided to join the Resistance, she helped me escape Gul Tiral’s estate.”

“And Gul Tiral suspected her, because he knew her sympathies?”

Rivni shakes her head, a rueful curve to her lips. “As far as he knew, there _were_ no sympathies. She figured out that she could only protect us if he thought she hated us, too. His loyal Kalana, helping a filthy ridge-nose? That was unthinkable to him. To any Cardassian who knew her. She was so good at the act, Gul Tiral made her his most trusted aide— and our cell’s best informant. Thousands of people are alive thanks to the information she passed to us. Maybe tens of thousands. She was… She was _magnificent_ , Varis.”

The fire fades from Rivni’s eyes, and she looks at the floor. “Gul Tiral caught her three months before the withdrawal. Somebody in the cell got fucking careless about the dead-drop site on the estate, and... Kalana been working with us for seven years. Seven years. Three more months, and she would've—“ Rivni curls in on herself, hugging her knees, unable to finish the sentence.

Evet waits several minutes. The waiting feels natural to him, for reasons he can’t explain. When it becomes clear that Rivni won’t continue on her own, he kindly says, “She would have seen a free Bajor, and she would have seen her name given a stone in the garden at Ashalla.”

“She isn’t there. In the garden. She asked us to keep it secret, if she got killed. Didn’t want her siblings to suffer. Gul Tiral _murdered_ her, and nobody—” Rivni viciously punches the wall behind her. The sound echoes in the corridor.

“May the Prophets grant her peace.” Because the knowledge feels strangely important, Evet asks, “How did she die?”

Rivni laughs without humor. “According to him? We killed her. The bastard couldn’t let Central Command or the Obsidian Order find out his daughter had been a Resistance informant, so he bombed his own house. Murdered Kalana and four Bajorans. He made it look like he was the real target, and she was just… unlucky. In the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“She is righteous in the eyes of the Prophets.” A term used to honor the few courageous Cardassians who died to save Bajorans during the Occupation. There is no corresponding phrase for a Cardassian who aided Bajorans and lived, because Cardassia ensured that there are none. (In Kardasi, righteous in the eyes of the Prophets translates to traitor, and the Kardasi word for traitor has its root in the future tense of to-be-killed. Evet doesn’t know why he knows this.) “Tiral Kalana’s name may not have a stone in the garden, but when I visit, I will pray for her.” Family name first, a quiet way of accepting the Cardassian as one of their own.

Rivni beams, eyes brimming with tears. “Tiral Kalana. She’d like the sound of that.” She wipes her eyes one last time and exhales deeply, signaling that the moment for heavy conversation has passed. “Are you new to the station? I could show you around.”

Evet has nothing more to gain from speaking with her— and he frowns at the strange thought. Why would he want to gain anything from this young woman? He hadn’t even known she would be in the corridor.

“If you’re busy,” Rivni starts, seeing his frown.

He sets the thought aside. “Not at all,” he says, favoring Rivni with a genuine smile. How good it is to be accepted by his people. How kind Rivni is, to freely offer him her company. “Nothing would please me more. You’re too kind, humoring an old man.” Evet braces his hands against his knees to stand, and he finds himself staring at scarred, scaleless skin. The last time he saw these hands, he was holding a pair of pliers. But why would he have been holding the pliers? He isn’t a—

Cardassian.

“I— I’m sorry,” Evet stammers. Shame trips his tongue. His vow of secrecy was a false one; he has lied to the Prophets, and they will not forgive him this. He wants to warn Rivni, but the scaled thing inside him holds his tongue. “I forgot, I do have an appointment.”

“Some other time?” Rivni asks him, but he’s already walking (the scaled thing does not allow him to run) away.

Back in his quarters, a man who is not Varis Evet disentangles himself from his lies, centering himself with the few cornerstones of truth allowed to someone in his profession. He is Elim Garak. He was a top operative in the Obsidian Order. (He was a torturer, and on this, he agrees with himself). He is Enabran Tain’s unclaimed bastard son. He is a loyal Cardassian, and he will die a loyal Cardassian, even if he never sets foot on Union territory again. He repeats these truths to himself, again and again, until his fingers feel the ridges return to his forehead.

With his alias cast off, Garak copies the security footage of the corridor — from the moment Tiral and Rivni entered together, to the moment Rivni left alone — to a data rod. That done, he overwrites the footage with a loop of an empty corridor. If anyone reviews the feed, they’ll learn nothing.

Well! His little chat with Rivni Nell yielded better fruit than he would have dared expect. A Gul murdered his seven-years-a-traitor daughter to hide her crimes? Finding such fine blackmail material on Terok Nor is like finding Tholian silk in a Bajoran flea market. It would have gone to waste, had his discerning eye not found it. The dying vestiges of Varis Evet rail against the crass cynicism, snarling about how like a Cardassian he is, and Garak cheerfully agrees. He _is_ a Cardassian. If Tain could see this—

Behind Garak, someone applauds, slow and disdainful.


	3. Chapter 3

Tain watches Garak, calm and cutting, a surgeon waiting to be disappointed by what he’ll find under the scalpel. Garak has broken more than one prisoner simply by staring at them, as Tain is doing now, until they buckled under the weight of heavy silence. To speak first is to lose. “Enabran Tain is on Arawath,” Garak says. “You aren’t him.”

(He could never imagine winning against his father.)

Tain chuckles. Despite himself, Garak drinks in the sound like desert sand soaks up the rain. For all his conflicted feelings towards Tain, all the anger and guilt and resentment, Garak has never stopped missing him. “With deductive skills like that,” says Tain, “it’s a miracle the Order wasn’t crippled by your absence. Of course I’m not him. I’m a creation of your mind, just like Mila was.”

This is only a mirage. The mirage knows that Garak chose Mila because it’s an extension of his imagination, but the real Tain will never find out. It’s entirely unnecessary for Garak’s heart to be pounding; his throat has no reason to go dry. “Tain often said he should have killed her before I was born.”

“I should have,” Tain agrees. “You disappoint me, Elim. Still, I can appreciate the symmetry. Literary, isn’t it? The son creating the mother and father?”

Of all the cruelties Garak was prepared to hear, _son_ and _father_ weren’t among them. (It _is_ a cruelty. Garak has waited for this acknowledgment since he learned of his parentage, and though it comes wrapped in Tain’s voice, it’s nothing more than a child’s pathetic cries echoing back from the dark.) “You aren’t my father,” he tells the mirage. His voice is as flat as the Cardassian desert.

“I’m the closest you’ll come to seeing him again.” The mirage closes the distance between them in two quick strides, and it raises its palm in invitation.

Some things a man can withstand, and some things he can’t. In his work for Tain, for the Order, for Cardassia, Garak was an eager researcher of humanoids’ breaking points. Now he’s found his own. A simple offer of touch, even from an impostor, and he is undone. (If the real Tain ever learns of this—)

Palm to palm. Tain is a mirage, but the weight of his hand is real. The word _father_ swells inside Garak’s chest, from somewhere beyond his self-control, and he swallows it down. He’ll hold on to the shreds of his dignity until Tain forces them from his fingers. He wants to blame the implant for dulling his wits, but he’d have reacted the same way two years ago, and ten, and twenty. Tain is threaded through him deeper than the wire.

Tain pulls away first, another victory for him. “If I knew you were that weak, I’d have exiled you sooner.”

In the blink of an eye, he vanishes.

Garak doesn’t believe that Tain is gone, which means there’s a good chance he isn’t gone. Methodically, thinking of nothing, he does a sweep of his quarters. (He can’t say if he hopes or dreads finding Tain, because that would be thinking, and he will not allow himself that.) Kitchen, living room, bedroom. Outside the door of the walk-in closet, he hesitates. Childishly, stupidly—

Rough hands shove him inside.

Tain’s voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. “You can come out,” he says, “when you’ve learned your lesson.”

Lights flicker on, bright enough to sting, revealing an Obsidian Order interrogation room. The buzz of the lightbulbs, too high a frequency for natural Cardassian hearing to register, is an old companion of Garak’s. A chair sits in the center of the room, turned away from him. An an elderly Cardassian woman is restrained in it. She has white hair and a stocky build, and even with her back turned to him, he would recognize her anywhere.

Next to the chair is a tray, and on that tray sit the tool of the trade.

“Tain,” Garak shouts. None of this is real, he reminds himself. He knows it, but he doesn’t _believe_ it. “This isn’t necessary, Enabran! She has no contacts aside from you and I. We’ll get nothing from interrogating her. Mila—“ Garak rounds the interrogation chair to plead with her, wild-eyed and desperate. “Talk to him, Mila. Make him see sense. You were always better at that than I was.”

Mila stares at him blankly, her expression devoid of recognition or understanding.

This isn’t about her, Garak remembers. This is _his_ lesson. His chance to redeem himself for the choice he made earlier. All the tools he needs are right in front of him. If he can hurt… not Mila, _not_ Mila, but this mirage of her, then Tain will see how loyal he is. Garak see how loyal he is. It’s a test, a simulation, and nothing more than that.

“Elim?” asks Mila. She looks at him as though squinting through fog. “Elim, what are you doing?”

Garak’s mind goes somewhere else, and he takes a scalpel from the tray.

The lights flicker.

“Was wondering when they’d send the torturer,” Kalana Tiral rasps in Bajoran, her Cardassian accent thick and grating. The bruises on her face aren’t Garak’s handiwork; the Order never cares much for transporting traitors delicately. All that really matters is for them to arrive with jaws intact. More pain is in Tiral’s immediate future, much more, but she looks unafraid. This is something rarer than false bravado: the bone-deep calm of the righteous martyr. Tiral is a true believer in the Bajoran cause, and now that her use has come to an end, nothing that happens to her matters. No pain Garak inflicts will break that calm; nothing will make her regret what she’s done.

Kalana Tiral is a traitor, and her treason has brought her peace. It’s infuriating.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Garak says affably. He sets the scalpel down (he can’t remember why he was holding it), but only after allowing Tiral to get a good look at the blade. A promise of things to come. “It’s been thirty hours, hasn’t it? You must be thirsty.”

Tiral, very stupidly, wastes precious water by spitting in Garak’s face. He wipes it away, flicking it onto the ground. Her father would have murdered her to hide the truth of her treachery, if the Order hadn’t captured her first. She should be more grateful. “You know, you’re only harming yourself by doing that.”

“You don’t like me stepping on your territory?”

“Come now, Tiral,” Garak chides. “If you’re trying to make me sympathize with the Bajorans, you’ll need to be more clever about it.”

“I know a lost cause when I see one.”

“Yet you joined the Resistance.”

Tiral’s peal of laughter devolves into a dry, painful cough. “I’ve seen the reports. Cardassia will have to withdraw by the end of the year, thank the Prophets.” Abruptly, Tiral switches to Kardasi. “We lost.” Bajoran has only one form of the word _we_ , but Kardasi, more sophisticated in all aspects, has many: you-and-I, them-and-I, family-and-I, nation-and-I. Tiral uses the last of these. To hear that word from the mouth of someone who abetted terrorists for the better part of a decade, a single breath after invoking Bajoran gods— it’s revolting. The sort of provocation that would get someone struck dead in the street.

“You won’t end this that easily.”

“Funny.” Back to Bajoran, now. “Death comes so easily when Bajorans are around.”

“Not for Rivni Nell.” Tiral startles at that— the first involuntary reaction Garak has drawn from her. “I thought you might recognize the name,” he says, smoothing his voice with more satisfaction than he feels. Sickness churns in his gut. He feels inexplicably out of practice, a blade dulled by disuse. Tiral will have to serve as a sharpening block. “A friend of yours, isn’t she? A very dear one.”

“We fed her bad intel,” Tiral lies, poorly. The things sentiment and desperation do to an otherwise skilled operative. If nothing else, she gets credit for using a more original line than the I swear she knows nothing that Garak hears so often. “We thought she was compromised. She’s useless to you.”

“Ah, then it’s fortunate that I won’t be relying on her for information. Not directly, I should say.”

Understanding breaks like bloody dawn on Tiral’s face. (Garak should relish it, but he doesn’t.) “Nothing you do to her will make me talk,” says Tiral. Under the rasp, her voice is steel.

“You say that without understanding what she’ll experience. Fortunately, I can enlighten you.” The words, so familiar, taste like bile on Garak’s tongue. A passage from a Human novel comes to mind: _All that’s left in the end is a kind of nausea; you never want to cause suffering again._ How strange. He’s never read any Human novels.

Tiral dissects Garak with her unyielding gaze, sharper than jevonite. The walls seem closer; his heart races like one of Tain’s riding hounds. “You don’t want to do this,” she says, finally. Not pleading, but interrogating. Observing.

“You betrayed Cardassia.” And, without meaning to say it: “You betrayed your father.”

“I’d betray Gul Tiral a thousand more times if it cut a single second off the Occupation, but I _never_ betrayed Cardassia. Look at us. We don’t have to be something that deserves to burn.” That ambiguous Bajoran _we_ : nation-and-I, you-and-I, all in one word.

Garak chooses his instrument. “Bear in mind,” he hears himself say, “that Bajorans have eighty percent the pain tolerance of Cardassians.”

Tiral raises her voice in song: something Bajoran and religious, which are nearly synonymous. Garak doesn’t want to listen to the lyrics, but pain might transmute them into useful information at any moment, and so he makes himself focus on the alien words. _Take your child’s pagh into your Temple, Blessed Ones; grant her the peace she was denied…_

A Bajoran in the Obsidian Order’s custody might as well be dead. Tiral is singing Rivni Nell’s funeral chant.

As Garak extracts the third nail (prying off neck scales is more effective on a Cardassian, but Tiral must believe she is experiencing exactly what will be done to Rivni), the ground trembles beneath them. Tiral opens her eyes. “The Prophets,” she gasps, elated, and she resumes her singing louder than before.

Another tremor every minute. Garak doesn’t think about the room collapsing in on them; for no reason, his breath quickens to match Tiral’s. The stench of blood fills his nose, fills him, until he thinks he’ll never smell anything else. Garak can’t leave his prisoner without completing his interrogation, but the ceiling will break long before Tiral Kalana. She means to trap Garak here with her, in the dark, under the rubble.

(He wants to get out. He wants to get out.)

His pliers should be going to Tiral’s right hand (he’s done with the left), but they hover over the restraints on her left arm. The straps would be easy to break. He stays there, frozen, wavering, until the strongest tremor yet knocks him to the floor.

The lights vanish, leaving Garak stranded in darkness. He blindly stretches out a hand. His fingers brush a closet door.

He throws himself against it, landing in an undignified heap on his bedroom floor. Terok Nor. He’s on Terok Nor. It has a different name now, because the Occupation is over, and he’s still here, because he is in exile.

Singing greets him. Not Tiral’s pained, pitchy rasp, but Jasal Sovat’s crystal tones, a voice that once commanded the adoration of millions. Garak must have left the orchestra recording on repeat. Before long, the chime of a station-wide announcement cuts through the music. “The thoron anomaly has been resolved,” says Odo. “Thank you for your patience and cooperation… to those of you who were patient and cooperative.”

It’s over.

Laughter bubbles up from some unseen rupture inside Garak. He drags himself over to the drawer containing the implant activation device, and for the second time today, he removes the device from its hiding place. He raises it overhead, thinking to smash it — none of this would have happened if he had full mental control, if the endorphins hadn’t weakened his defenses — and then he’s fumbling with the dial, turning it to its highest setting.

The world blurs, softening at the edges, but Sovat’s voice remains clear. One of Garak’s remaining contacts in the Order, an agent Garak trained himself, was part of Sovat’s arrest. According to that contact, Sovat had filled a dozen notebooks with fragments of protest songs. The songs never saw the light of day. To use them as evidence would necessitate spreading their seditious contents, and so the Order contained the infection at the source by feeding Sovat’s work to his replicator, one notebook at a time, as he watched in silence.

_Look at us. We don’t have to be something that deserves to burn._

Garak narrowly makes it to the refresher before the retching starts. Everything Tiral Kalana said came from inside him, and he empties himself clean of her, clean of Rivni Nell, clean of Varis Evet. The bile doesn’t sting his throat. The taspar eggs that he cooked with the mirage of Mila go to waste, and nothing hurts at all.

(Long-dead Jasal Sovat still sings.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Garak takes an early, painful step on his journey of What If Fascism Is Bad, Actually.  
> \- Righteous in the eyes of the Prophets and the garden at Ashalla are references to [Righteous among the Nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_among_the_Nations) and the [Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_the_Righteous_Among_the_Nations), respectively.  
> \- The novel Garak references is _The Spy Who Came in from the Cold_ , by John le Carre: “I mean in our world we pass so quickly out of the register of hate or love—like certain sounds a dog can’t hear. All that’s left in the end is a kind of nausea; you never want to cause suffering again."


End file.
